Paula would be grateful for some help or advice: she is a single female aged 43 and a diabetic who wants information on travel to Ireland. She is planning a trip either next August or December. She is interested in music, Irish culture, meeting Reform Jews in the area and would be grateful for any advice on the best places to visit. If you are a music lover please tell her where the best CD stores are and where she can hear the finest Irish music. She is interested in classical music, Irish folk, pub music and pop.

She also wants information on safe accommodations, diabetic food spots, where the nicest Jewish temples are and best times to visit.

Please e-mail or write to: Paula Hurwitz, 7545 Murray Hill Road, #832, Columbia, MD 21046 or e-mail phurwitz@erols.com

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website: Mutual Aid

They really do have long memories! Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has shown that elephants have very long memories, large brains and are highly emotional. Orang-utans are the cleverest of non human primates and can perform complex tasks such as opening doors by choosing the right key from a bunch of keys. Squirrels have a brain proportionally 1.5 times bigger than humans and can remember where they have buried 10,000 nuts!

Have you got £15 million to spare? There have been two space tourists so far: 61-year-old American businessman Dennis Tito paid to go into space on a Russian space vessel. Mark Shuttleworth the South African business tycoon has just finished his week's training and is set to become the world's second paying space traveller when he visits the International Space Station aboard a Russian ship in April.

Up until now, NASA has opposed private individuals paying to go into space. Until now, that is. NASA has now published a set of rules which all potential space travellers must meet before being allowed into a spacecraft.

NASA's chief astronaut, Charles Precourt, who helped draw up the rules, said: 'We don't want to embarrass our space partners by having [a tourist] who would be so controversial that it would be an insult to the other partners to fly them because of some behavioural background that was considered distasteful.”

If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites

The United Nations last week identified Chernobyl as being an eco-tourism venue of the future. Wildlife has started to come back to the area after the terrible radioactive contamination. Moose, red deer, beavers and lynx have all been spotted in the woods along with flowers and birds. Would you go?

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the UK is advising against all travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Yemen until further notice. Reprisals are also feared against Western travellers in other parts of the world including the Chechen Republic, East Timor, Indonesia, Macedonia, Somalia, the West Bank and parts of Albania.

FCO Website.

According to Alt Wire OmPlace, bad news could come to Machu Picchu. There is a proposal to build a funicular from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu to make the site more accessible and increase the average visitor rate from 2000 to 8000/day. UNESCO and other groups are lobbying to block the construction, which would cut a swath of rainforest down the mountain significantly deteriorating the view. Anyone remember the Celestine Prophecy? Source: omplace.com/

Yes, the Millennium Bridge is open once again! It is the first pedestrian river crossing in London for over 100 years. The 325 metre bridge links St. Paul's Cathedral on the north bank of the River Thames to the Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the south side of the river. Its taken 20 months and £5m ($7.5m) to add industrial strength shock absorbers to make the wobbly bridge walkable. But it is open, and despite the exceedingly inclement weather (hailstones and bone chilling wind), the Beetle and Padmassana made the crossing the day after re-opening in search of fish and chips at the local pub nearby!

Under 24? A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?

Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?

Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

The travel company part owned by Sir Bob Geldof:

deckchair.com/